No turning back the clock

May 9 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

Poking fun at his former Soviet masters and praising a Europe without borders, former Polish president and Nobel peace prize winner Lech Walesa tells Karen Dent why he believes migrant workers are good for Poland – and the North East.

GRACIOUSLY accepting the plaudits that follow him everywhere he goes, Lech Walesa swept his achievements aside with a joke as he addressed a packed-out lecture theatre at Durham University.

“Being a simple worker, I have a Nobel peace prize, I have two professorship titles and more than 100 honorary doctoral degrees. Leonid Brezhnev would wear a jacket full of medals – and I would say I have 50 times as many as him, so I am incapable of wearing them all at once or you would need a crane to lift me out of my chair!

“But I am not more talented or wiser than any of you. All I have learned to do is read situations and to face challenges and oppression which I have been faced with.”

Poland’s first democratically elected president, this Gdansk shipyard electrician – instrumental in the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe when he started the Solidarity union in 1980 – came to the region because of a conversation between two Durham University students.

Charlotte Ramsbotham and Natalia Thomas share a house in the city – and turned to their fathers to ask them to invite Walesa to speak in Durham. Charlotte’s dad is James Ramsbotham, the chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC) and Natalia is the daughter of David Thomas, chairman of the British Polish Chamber of Commerce.

“She rang me, and said why can’t we bring him to Durham?” said Mr Thomas, who works to encourage more UK firms to take advantage of the trade opportunities than now exist in Poland.

He used his contacts and the former president, a charismatic speaker now on the fringes of the Polish political scene, accepted the invitation.

Although other speakers at yesterday’s event focused on current and potential business links between the North East and Poland, Walesa’s speech was peppered with jokes, via his articulate translator Magdalena Iwinska, many of which were at the expense of the former Soviet Union’s leaders.

But growing up in a country with impenetrable borders and ultimately rebelling against a Communist regime which he said was run by radishes, “they were red on the outside only,” means Walesa is a great fan of the EU and the opportunities it offers to Poland.

And he supports the great wave of Polish migration that the UK has experienced since his country joined the EU in 2004. “It could have caused a lot of harm to the Polish economy in the days when the borders were closed, but now the borders are open and they can return any time they wish, so I think this situation has benefited us.

“Had they stayed in Poland, had they stayed unemployed and not paid their taxes, this would have worked to the disadvantage of all of us. Now, when those people come to Britain and they get a job, they pay the taxes and we get the return in a subsidy from the European Union,” he said.

“Of course not everybody likes it but those who have a better idea, let them present it formally. Complaining doesn’t help things. Our generation was given this opportunity and we are living it.”

He is unhappy that so many well- qualified Poles end up in unskilled jobs in the UK, a situation he considers of little benefit to anyone.

“Once money has been spent on the qualification and acquiring the skills, why don’t we benefit from what has been achieved? It is a shame and a waste of the money that has been invested in them.”

And Walesa is adamant the clock cannot be turned back.

“We can no longer be confined to small countries; such a restriction would impede all our progress. I insist on this generation being successful. If you fail, I will be forced to give my awards back!”

PAGE TWO: The Polish effect.